1. Technical Field
The present invention embodiments pertain to data manipulation within a remote database. In particular, embodiments of the present invention pertain to a system and method enabling database clients to manipulate data within a remote database in a multi-tier environment (e.g., the remote database generally resides on a target server that is accessed through intermediate servers) without actually retrieving that data.
2. Discussion of Related Art
Remote databases may store data in various data types, where certain data types (e.g., Large Object Data (LOB), XML data, etc.) are typically utilized to store large data objects. In order to prevent large data objects (or instances of data types forming those large data objects) from being transmitted across a network, locators or handles (e.g., SQL locators, pointers, etc.) identifying the desired data objects (or instances of the data types) are employed and transferred across the network to indicate the desired data. When a database client desires to manipulate data objects within a remote database without retrieving the data, the database client employs the handles to identify data for desired operations. The remote database generally resides on a target server.
Since the handles consume significantly less storage capacity than the data objects, network bandwidth is conserved while reducing network traffic. However, the handles are limited to working in a two-tier client-server configuration (e.g., the remote database residing on a server accessible without intermediate servers) since these handles or locators are not unique across multiple database servers.